Magnetic North Orchestra

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Magnetic North Orchestra (MNO) was a Norwegian jazz group from Oslo, active from 1992 to 2005. It was created and led by Jon Balke and began as a jazz ensemble with strings and percussion, inspired by Oslo 13. Balke served as an Olympic musical ambassador for the 1994 Lillehammer Games and created the larger work Magnetic North, which helped the group tour across Europe, the United States, and Japan. In 2001, the project Grand Magnetic featured fourteen string players from the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, and there was also a version with Trondheim Solistene. After 2002, MNO worked closely with Balke’s Batagraf project. The lineup varied from seven to thirteen musicians.